System and Method for Optimizing Data Storage in a Distributed Data Storage Environment

Abstract

A growing amount of data is produced daily resulting in a growing demand for storage solutions. While cloud storage providers offer a virtually infinite storage capacity, data owners seek geographical and provider diversity in data placement, in order to avoid vendor lock-in and to increase availability and durability. Moreover, depending on the customer data access pattern, a certain cloud provider may be cheaper than another. In this respect is provided a method and a system that facilitates allocation of data objects in a distributed data storage environment. The system continuously adapts the placement of data based on its access patterns and subject to optimization objectives, such as storage costs. The system efficiently considers repositioning of only selected objects that may significantly lower the storage cost.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to data storage in a distributed data storage environment. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods for facilitating allocation of data objects in a distributed data storage environment.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Cloud providers are offering efficient on-demand storage solutions that can virtually scale indefinitely. Many public cloud storage providers are already available in the market, such as Amazon S3 (http: / / aws.amazon.com / s3), Google Storage (http: / / code.google.com / apis / storage), Microsoft Azure (http: / / microsoft.com / windowsazure) or RackSpace CloudFiles (http: / / rackspace.com / cloud) and one may expect new providers to appear in the coming years. The offers in terms of pricing among providers vary significantly and may change over time to adapt to the market. Choosing the best-suited or cheapest provider for the data implies knowing in advance the access pattern to the data. Data tha...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention provides a system and method for distributing data objects in a multi-provider data storage environment. The system can continuously adapt the placement of data based on its access pattern and optimization objectives. The method can also adapt the placement to minimize storage cost, reduce the dependence on a specific data storage provider, and minimize vendor lock in.

Problems solved by technology

In most cases, it is difficult to know in advance the access pattern of a data item, and therefore one needs an adaptive solution to choose the most cost-efficient provider.

However, finding a suitable provider based on the access pattern of the data is not enough.

A provider may end its business or suddenly increase its pricing policy.

Images